As we approach ‘the season to be jolly’, there is an ugly campaign by some councils and firms to ban Christmas, purportedly to prevent offence to minorities. Prime among the minorities allegedly offended are Muslims, yet I can recall no statement by the Muslim Council of Britain to that effect, and MPAC even carried an article entitled ‘Leave Christmas Alone’. Of course, the ugly campaign has given succour to ugly Islamophobes like the BNP, so it is good to see that whilst Muslims themselves may not celebrate the season, they have no objection to everyone else doing so. 


It must be emphasised that nowhere in the New Testament are Christians told to celebrate a festival dedicated to Christ’s birth, still less do we find Santa in the Bible! In fact, some Protestants connect the two figures studied in these books: Seal shows that some (presumably Evangelical) websites in 2004 urged Christians ‘don’t glorify Satan by giving the glory and attributes of Jesus Christ to Santa Claus!’ (p. 255) – a kind of Salafi Christian accusation of Shirk! Indeed, at the Reformation (p.174ff), Protestants throughout Europe banned St. Nicholas Day (6 December), since they rejected the very notion of ‘saints’. The reason New Year is bigger than Christmas in Scotland is because the Reformer John Knox attacked the latter as ‘Papistical’. 


Seal’s book is excellent, and would be a good Christmas gift for an older child or adult. Thorough but eminently readable, it tells how Bishop Nicholas actually existed in what is now Turkey, c.280-352, p. 15. Nicholas’ story as the bringer of gifts has its origin in the tale of how he heard that an impoverished nobleman intended to sell his three daughters into prostitution, but God sent Nicholas (incognito) to throw bags of gold through the man’s window over three occasions, and on the third time the nobleman caught Nicholas in the act, pp. 33-34. Nicholas went on to become the Patron Saint of Russia and sailors (St. Nicholas chapels are common in ports all over Europe, and his tomb at Myra became a shrine for both Catholics and Orthodox, where he was associated with healing and bestowal of wealth. However, by 1087, the rise of the Muslim Turks had endangered the Byzantine city, and Italians from Bari actually staged an SAS-style kidnap of his bones to Catholic Bari, p. 122. 


Despite his battering at the Protestant Reformation, Nicholas survived, partly because of Dutch fondness for St. Nicholas Day, which they exported to America. On this day, as in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, gifts of fruit, sweets and nuts would be given to good children, often in shoes or stockings, p. 183ff, whereas bad children would be scolded by his impish colleague ‘Black Peter’ – another contact with Islam, since he probably represented a Moor, and hence the origins of ‘he knows if you’ve been naughty or nice’. It was at this time Nicholas began to come down chimneys instead of through windows. 


In America, by the nineteenth century, as a result of contact with British and German descendants, Nicholas ultimately moved from 6 December to Christmas Day, where he merged with the German idea of the Christkindl – ‘Christ Child’, who brought the gift of salvation, which was Americanised to ‘Kriss Kringle’, whereas the Dutch for St. Nicholas -‘SinterKlass’ – became ‘Santa Claus’, p. 223ff. In Britain, as Christmas revived in the Victorian era after the hammering it received from the Puritans, the figure merged with the personification of the Season – ‘Father Christmas’, p. 236. American influence gave Santa his sack of gifts, his reindeer and even his red garb. Made even more popular by Coca-Cola adds in the 20th century, Santa became the personification of all that is seen as good – generosity, care for children, joyousness. 


Of course, Santa is simply a personification – not even a myth. He is not an object of worship (at least for Protestants), and there is nothing unhealthy about his image. He is frequently the subject of Hollywood films, such as this year’s offering, ‘Santa Clause – the Escape Clause’. So is the next figure, who unfortunately is not a personification, who is the source of everything bad and malevolent, and for some people even an object of worship – Satan. There are a number of books by Evangelical Christians who used to be witches or Satanists which detail the sick, malign character of the Devil’s cult. The novels of Dennis Wheatley have been very popular, and the basis for movies. Kelly’s book is more of an academic study, and whilst not suitable for children, it is useful to see how history has treated the Evil One. 


Kelly’s book looks at ‘biographical’ details of Satan in the Bible, the Apocrypha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Early Church Fathers, the Middle Ages, in Art and in the modern world. It is a mark of how Islam is becoming part of the discourse in the West that he also gives part of a chapter (all too brief, unfortunately), to examine ‘Iblis in the Koran’, p. 184. Surprisingly, Kelly does not examine how Satan has entered the modern political fray in that Khomeini characterised America as ‘the Great Satan’, a designation since imitated by many other Muslims. Perhaps future editions could examine this. 


One drawback in the book is that the author, who is a Professor of English rather than a Biblical scholar, accepts liberal Biblical criticism when it comes to the authorship of various books, at least tentatively, e.g. p. 54; Muslims also will not appreciate Kelly’s comment that the fourth century work ‘The Life of Adam and Eve’ was ‘an important source for Mohammed’, p. 182, in regard to the origins of the Devil. However, neither Christians nor Muslims should allow this to put them off obtaining the book, which is interesting and informative. 


Whereas the Qur’an is explicit in its account of the origin of Satan – namely that he refused to bow before Adam, p. 185, the Bible is less concerned with this biographical detail. Some Christians, following Early Church writers such as Origen see Isaiah 14:12 as providing a biography, p. 194ff, and it from this identification, which calls the King of Babylon ‘the Dawn-bringer’ – i.e. ‘Lucifer, many have built their theories. I have never accepted this, and agree with Kelly that it is indeed only the Babylonian King himself, not some purported ‘spirit’ behind him, that is in view. John 8:44, examined in p. 107ff, identifies Satan as ‘a man-killer from the beginning’, the ‘beginning’ referring to the Eden incident when the Serpent, identified with Satan, tempted Adam and Eve into Sin, ‘bringing on the eventual penalty of death’, p. 108. 


Whereas Islam identifies Satan as a Jinn, the Bible presents him as a fallen angel, and my interpretation is that he fell from angelic innocence when he brought about the sin of Adam. A long-standing Jewish tradition, represented in the apocryphal work ‘The Wisdom of Solomon’, states that Death entered the world through the Devil’s ‘envy’, p. 72. If this was indeed the motivation for Satan’s temptation of Adam and Eve, then the Biblical and Qur’anic accounts have something more in common. 


We have only to look at the daily massacres in Iraq, the recent slaughter in Lebanon and Palestine, or for that matter, 7/7, to appreciate the reality that Satan, the inspirer of such acts, is indeed the Ultimate Murderer. Why anyone would want to worship such a being is unimaginable – but some people are openly attracted by what is Bad. Santa Claus, though purely a personification, should remind us of how God wants to see characteristics such as compassion, love for children and generosity displayed in human life, and in this sense Santa is the personified embodiment of human Good, and the Ugly campaign by councils and firms against Christmas should cease. It should be remembered that during the First World War, the Satanic slaughter in the trenches ceased for one day – Christmas Day 1914. Traditionally, Santa figures visit the children of Bethlehem at this season. If anyone is in need of the goodness, compassion and peace that Santa symbolises, it is the children of Palestine. Let’s pray that they enjoy it this Christmas. 


Santa: A Life, Jeremy Seal 

(Picador, 2006, £7.99), 292pp 

Satan: A Biography, Henry Ansgar Kelly, 

(Cambridge University Press, 2006, ISBN 052160408, £12.99), 360pp